Originally Posted by Gorath
A new patch is out. Could you give the new features & improvements a try and include them in the review if they're relevant enough?

I'm starting over with a new play through, and will construct a second look article or make further comments to the submitted review if it changes anything significant - I deliberately avoided talking about bugs in the review for this reason though.

I didn't mean spending hours on the improvements. In most cases a brief look would be enough for an assessment.

Bugs should be mentioned if you ran into them and consider them annoying enough. If the only issue is a couple of floating trees, it's not really worth writing about.
The promise "we'll fix it later" should be countered with "then we'll revise the rating after the patch".

Originally Posted by Gorath
I didn't mean spending hours on the improvements. In most cases a brief look would be enough for an assessment.

Bugs should be mentioned if you ran into them and consider them annoying enough. If the only issue is a couple of floating trees, it's not really worth writing about.
The promise "we'll fix it later" should be countered with "then we'll revise the rating after the patch".

Depends if you're reviewing code that's representative of the retail experience. Often you get review code that is a few versions behind retail, because they've had to freeze it earlier. In such cases I try and make a judgement on how likely it is such things are to be addressed by retail. Case in point for my review - there was a really annoying bug where a bit of speech ("That's impossible, commander") would start looping over and over. This drove me (and my wife if she was in the room) mad! I didn't know, but it was present in the retail version briefly, but was fixed in today's patch. My reviews still not out, so would now be out of date if I had mentioned it

DArtagnan

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I'd like to suggest implementing "half stars" for future reviews. I don't think full stars only represent enough precision for a fair numerical score.

Am I alone in thinking this?

It does make quite a bit swing in perception - 60% vs 80% for one star would be taken badly on sites like metacritic.. but on the other hand RPGWatch has a clear scoring guide and if that's followed without regard for other scoring systems it's not too bad. Plus it really makes you think about which to choose and to justify it when the editors start picking over your review

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I'd like to suggest implementing "half stars" for future reviews. I don't think full stars only represent enough precision for a fair numerical score.

Am I alone in thinking this?

No, I agree. I would actually prefer either a scoreless system or a 0 - 10 or 0 - 100 scale. But if it has to be a five star system then half stars should definitely be allowed since every single star is a full 20% plus or minus. This is certainly making it quite difficult for the reviewer. Is the game a 6/10 or an 8/10? No in-betweens. That can be pretty tough to decide in some cases.
Finally, I'd like to suggest that if the stars are kept that the star icons should finally be replaced by something less light yellow and more golden (maybe like —> see attachment)?

Originally Posted by Corwin
Dart, to some extent I agree with you. I'd like to see the scoring re-written since I have the same issues you do. All I was commenting on was equating those scores with a percentage.

People will equate it to a percentage no matter what you write in your wording, though.

Also, 70% to you means something completely different than what 70% means to a random stranger.

The fact that joxer calls it perfect should be evidence enough that something is wrong with it